


The Words Came Easily

by A_Fool_in_Love



Category: Fitz and the Fool Trilogy - Robin Hobb, Realm of the Elderlings - Robin Hobb
Genre: Angst, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-20
Updated: 2017-05-20
Packaged: 2018-11-02 22:25:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10953972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Fool_in_Love/pseuds/A_Fool_in_Love
Summary: Fitz and the Fool have a conversation in the quarry. It isn't an easy one, but the words are. They come more easily than Fitz would ever have expected, and he only regrets that they come so late.





	The Words Came Easily

     I had not finished my history of the Six Duchies. Chade, Patience, Fedwren… Any who might have cared about such an endeavor were gone. I would soon be gone too. The thought occurred to me in a rare moment of awareness. The longer I spent on my wolf, the more the world around me seemed to fade. With my awareness came the agony of the blisters covering my still human skin- filled with eggs and the burrowing, biting worms. I made a choked sound, half-groan half-whimper, and curled forward around my belly so that my forehead rested on the wolf’s flank. Everything hurt. My lungs burned with every shallow breath I took, and I could feel the parasites digging through my flesh. I hissed a breath out through my teeth. Blood bubbled between them. I spat it out onto the black stone and let my wolf absorb it.

     I remembered the feeling of a well-cut quill moving across Fedwren’s fine parchment. The small pleasure of a rich, black line trailing after it. The smell of good ink. The purple I had never been able to perfect. I cherished those memories selfishly, indulgently. How many nights had I spent bleeding my words out onto page after page, only to cast them to the flames? So many. So much time I had taken for granted.

     I put the memories into my wolf.

     I mourned the loss, and then I put the pain in too.

     There was so much left unfinished and I had so little left to give.

     “Fitz?” A quiet voice to my left. I’d sensed nothing with my wit, and my eyes must have fallen shut. I knew not how much time had passed. I dragged my eyes open and blinked the pink, stinging blood away. They were eating my eyes. How long would I be able to see?

     It was the Fool. Through my blurry vision, I saw him. He stood two paces from me, just barely inside the small shelter some well-meaning people had erected around me and my wolf. His eyes looked very wide, and he was very pale in the flickering light of the fire. He stared at me with a stricken expression. I did not know what I looked like, but it must not have been good.

      “You should rest,” the Fool suggested. It was dark. It hardly mattered to me.

     “I have to finish my wolf,” I said, though I knew that he knew it. I shut my eyes and then urged my Skill to heal them. I knew the worms would only continue their feast, and I knew that I wasted precious strength, but I wanted to see. I wasn’t ready to lose that yet. I put that fear into my wolf. I gave him the pain as well. So much pain. It seemed that it was all I’d ever had to offer anybody.

     When I opened my eyes again, the Fool was touching my shoulder carefully. My vision was more clear now, and I almost wished that I could not see the anguish that lined his face. He withdrew his hand and retreated to sit down a pace away, his knees drawn up to his chest in his familiar boyhood posture. His face twisted and his lips parted to bare his teeth.

     “I’m sorry,” the Fool choked and then took a shuddering breath. I saw the firelight sparkle on the track a tear left as it slid down to hang at the bottom of his chin before falling. “I was just so afraid. You shut your eyes and I- I thought.” Another shaking indrawn breath. “I’m not ready, Fitz. I can’t face your death again.”

     “We don’t really have a choice,” I said. I was not ready to die. I wanted to see my granddaughter. I wanted to be a father to Bee. A better one than I had been. I wanted to taste ginger cakes and sit astride a horse one last time. I wanted to share Sandsedge brandy with the Fool by a hearthfire instead of tears by what was essentially my tomb.

     “No,” the Fool gave a small, dark laugh that conveyed no trace of humour. “No choices left for us. Oh, Fitz.”

     He broke then. I think that he had been trying to hold back his grief for Bee’s sake, but now he sobbed into his knees and rocked himself like a child. I longed to reach out to touch him, but my silvered hands prevented it. I felt his pain as keenly as if it were my own and I gave it all to my wolf.

     Death has a way of reminding us of the important things in life, as well as the small pleasures that we may take for granted. Tasks set aside for tomorrow. Things we would do better ‘next time’. I had so little time left.

     “We always think that we have the rest of our lives,” I reflected aloud. “It isn’t very much time at all.”

     My words had been ill considered. The Fool sobbed harder, and I found it in the hollow shell of myself to feel concern for the way his sobs wracked his body. He seemed scarcely able to breathe.

     There were very few things that I could fix now. I would never be a good father to Bee. I would never see my granddaughter grow, or see Hap wed. I would never make a purple ink or look on Buckkeep castle again. I would never make amends to Nettle for giving her up, and we would never have a chance to be as close as I wished we could have been. I would never write my history. So many things I’d never do.

     There was one thing that I could fix. One regret I could silence before I died.

     “Fool,” I said, cutting into a quiet period when his crying wore down. He did not lift his head, but I sensed that he listened so I continued to speak. “When you were dead on Aslevjal… The Pale Woman. She told me that you named me Beloved because in your culture, you exchange names to denote lifelong bonds. To say that the other is as dear to you as your own life.”

     The Fool was sniffling still, but quiet. His shoulders trembled and he had wrapped his arms around his knees in an attempt to comfort himself.

     “I love you, Fool,” I said. I could offer him that much. Give him that. Was it true? After all we’d been through and the ways he’d used me as his Catalyst. After all the lies and deception. After all our quarrels and the distance between us? Yes. I loved him, and I found it was easier to admit it now. Perhaps it had always been easy, and I had simply refused to acknowledge it. So much wasted time. “FitzChivalry Farseer,” I named him. I heard his breath catch.

     “I love you,” he said, and then his sobs began anew.

     “I will put that in my wolf,” I told him, but I could not bring myself to do so. Not yet. I wanted to keep it for myself for just a while longer. The thing I had so denied and rejected was suddenly a precious gem. I looked at the black and silver stone that held the rough impressions of fur and muscle. So little time left. I held my Fool’s words in my heart the way a child clings to a beloved doll, reluctant to give them up.

     The Fool cried himself to sleep beside me. While he slept, I remembered nights spent sleeping back-to-back, and mocking songs in Buckkeep halls. I remembered apricot brandy. I remembered a simple tune on the sea pipes. I remembered a towertop room filled with life and colour. Ribald jests around a fire. The tears I shed were tinged with blood. They fell to the hard stone beneath my face and were absorbed. In the darkness, I mourned us.

     When morning came, I surrendered. I gave it all to my wolf.


End file.
